


Call me now, it's urgent.

by morvish



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morvish/pseuds/morvish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt for tumblr.</p><p>otherwise known as 4 times lance called keith and 1 time keith called lance.<br/>(why 4 + 1, i have no real reason)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Call me now, it's urgent.

Keith was in the middle of treading a careful path across a bog when he got the first call. He almost slipped on a particularly wet rock as his communicator flashed blue in a familiar way. After balancing himself out with a relatively painful splits then standing up properly, Keith tsked and rolled his eyes.

“What is it now?” he growled into the speaker.

“Keith, have you seen where my slippers are?”

Keith’s hands balled into fists, but he kept his tone level, despite one of his feet beginning to slide down the rock.

“No, Lance, I have not.”

“Oh … Hunk said you might have them, that’s all.”

“Why would I have your slippers, Lance?”

“I don’t know! That’s why I’m asking, duh.”

Keith sighed and shook his head, before having to throw out a hand to keep his balance. “Lance, I’m in the middle of a dangerous mission on an alien planet – don’t call me about something like this again.”

“Ever?”

“Goodbye, Lance.”

“Ugh, bye.”

Keith slammed his communicator off, and fell into the bog.

* * *

Keith had finally been given the opportunity to go with Allura to one of her important diplomatic meetings. They were visiting dignitaries of the Planet Ebb, and Keith had read an entire book on customs and formality that Coran had dropped in front of him the night before. He had even asked Shiro, who was sick, to test him on some of them. He had checked and rechecked his outfit, hair, and anything else that occurred to him, before heading into the ship there with Allura.

Even Allura seemed fairly nervous about it, or at least she was being snippier than usual. Not that that bothered Keith much. It was just making him slightly more stressed out about it. He sat on his seat, jiggling his leg up and down, next to Allura while she cursed colourfully at a piece of equipment which wasn’t quite working.

They spent an awkward half hour in the ship, a coldly courteous moment dealing with an alien valet, then a stiff ten minutes striding to the palace. In the foyer, Allura straightened Keith’s outfit.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so grumbly this morning,” she said, brushing dirt Keith could have sworn was not actually there off his lapel. “It’s just – this is a very important meeting, and I’m still rather new to all of this. Shiro is usually good at keeping me level-headed, but obviously he couldn’t come today and – well, I’m very grateful you’re here.” She gave him a warm smile before patting his outfit once more.

Keith returned the smile for a brief moment, before Allura straightened up, her mouth set in a serious and ready for formal talks line once more.

“Alright,” she whispered, “are you ready?”

Keith nodded sharply, eyebrows knit together in determination.

“Let’s do this.”

They entered the meeting room, where a large glossy, faintly glowing table sat a number of different alien dignitaries. They mostly appeared to be wearing stern and doubting faces, although one very much looked as though they needed to go to the bathroom. Keith’s eyebrows drew even closer together.

“Princess Allura,” croaked the person in the biggest seat, which appeared to be floating and mostly gaseous.

“Basileus Tang,” said the princess. Keith gave the basileus a generous nod.

“Please,” they said. “Sit, and we can begin negotiations.”

Keith followed Allura to sit beside her at the table.

It was then that it happened.

A familiar blue flashing on his wrist. A beeping whined out of the communicator strapped there.

“Lance,” Keith murmured angrily at the same as the princess muttered it tiredly.

A voice piped up tinnily across the silent room.

“Keith! Oh man! Did you know that you can make the gladiators fight each other? Pidge just wired some stuff up and now we’re watching them – it’s like a movie, you should come watch too, we’re about to place bets. Bring us some goo, we forgot to get food. Can you make it taste like popcorn?”

The thin sound of Lance’s crowing rebounded throughout the room, and Keith could only presume that everyone else was also hearing it echo in their own minds like some horrible, terrible reverberation.

“I,” wheezed Keith. “I can’t right now, Lance.”

“I told you he wouldn’t,” Lance said, presumably to Pidge and Hunk. “What a party pooper, am I right. I guess you’re too busy – wait, what are you doing? If you’re not with us or training with the gladiators then…”

“Um, goodbye Lance,” Keith said.

“Uh,” said Lance before he heard a scuffle, what sounded like a door opening, Shiro’s voice say something in a mildly panicked tone, then Lance’s comm hang up.

The room remained silent.

Keith stared at his wrist communicator.

He could feel Allura staring at him.

Someone in the room made a noise resembling a cough.

“So the negotiations,” piped a small squeaky voice from round the table.

Allura and Keith’s heads shot up, both bright red.

“Yes,” choked Allura. “The negotiations.”

* * *

It was a glorious free day, and Keith had spent the morning exploring the warm new planet they had landed on; lunchtime searching for food that didn’t resemble goo at the local market place; and was so ready for his afternoon of training.

He knew that Coran was in the map room, going through grid references and planetary listings for their next landing. Allura was out in the town meeting some of the locals. Shiro was doing some wandering of his own. The others were on a small mission a few miles away, trying to find some rare-ish kind of fruit which they could use for their medical supplies.

Keith was alone. Keith was content.

Keith was mildly put out by the sound of his communicator bringing up a call, just as he was about to turn it off for his training.

“Lance?” he asked.

“Hey, Keith, I was wonderin- oh, nevermind. Ha ha, Hunk, nice on-” and he was hung up on.

Keith let out a long-suffering sigh, though an unbidden and surprising smile lingered.

He decided not to turn the communicator off.

* * *

It had been an incredibly long day, but it wasn’t over yet.

Looking at the map in his helmet, Keith estimated that he had another four hours of trekking to go.

He gave himself a single sigh, and then spurred himself forward with a push of muscles.

The sun was bright and warm; and his terrain for now was not horrible – it was mostly flat, and he was surrounded by a pretty field of yellow and green crops he didn’t recognise. Unfortunately, the air wasn’t suitable for humans, so he had to wear his full suit, which had the tendency to get a little too warm on long-distance walks.

But this was something they couldn’t use the lions for; they had all been dropped in various points round this world in order to learn more about the planet, which Coran had been shocked to find they had no records of.

So far, Keith hadn’t come across any of the planet’s inhabitants, though he was clearly in some kind of field system, so he avoided walking over any of the crops, and stuck to the edges of the apparent fields.

He suddenly caught a flashing in his helmet. It was blue.

Keith rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help the smile which pulled at his mouth.

“What is it Lance?” he asked.

There was just breathing in response. Keith furrowed his brow.

“Lance?” he said, a little louder.

He could hear his own voice resound strangely in the helmet, strangely muted against the plasticky layer. But apparently Lance could not, as the breathing simply continued.

“Lance, have you butt dialled me?” Keith muttered. “Have you somehow managed to butt dial me on a communicator that is inside your helmet?”

Keith heard Lance suck a breath in as he presumably tripped over something.

He must have his own communicator on mute.

Keith rolled his eyes. He could either turn his own communicator on mute, or listen to Lance until he realised what he’d done.

If he turned it on mute then he might miss important later calls, so there was really only one option.

For the first half an hour or so, listening to Lance breathe, and occasionally sighing in tiredness, was incredibly creepy. The second half hour was less so; Lance’s breathing had slowly somehow become less alarming, and more strangely pleasant. Like a nice accompaniment to the alien birds tweedling, and the soft rustle of the crops he was walking alongside.

Every now and then, Keith would ask, “Lance?” to see if Lance had turned his sound back on yet – with minimal results.

There was one time when he thought Lance might have, but it was just Lance choking on his own spit at the wrong moment.

Keith was wandering through a neon forest when Lance suddenly started humming a sweet tune. It was vaguely familiar, but Keith couldn’t place where. Lance didn’t have the best singing voice – not that Keith could talk – but he could just about carry a tune quite nicely. Maybe it was something he had heard Lance humming or singing before.

It was a sweet sound, and Keith couldn’t help being endeared. He brought his hand up to his face, where he was sure he must have been grinning, but his hand just hit the transparent smoothness of his helmet.

“Ugh,” he said.

Lance hummed for a short while before stopping – which was slightly disappointing.

Keith could hear Lance was getting tired, his breaths growing slower, and turning into exhausted pants and sighs. He muttered about how far he had to walk a few times, grumbling something about lions and the point of and having them.

Keith checked his own map, and guessed his own journey was another two hours or so, maybe less. He searched for Lance – who was on the other side of Pidge from Keith, a few hundred miles away. Lance seemed to have gone a little quicker than Keith and had less ground to cover left; but that made sense, because Keith had never known Lance to know how to pace himself.

Lance chuckled to himself about something, and Keith shook his head, wishing he knew what Lance was laughing to himself about.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, smiling. There was no response, just Lance breathing out as he continued to walk. Keith rolled his eyes – but there was no mean feeling behind it. It was just something Lance made him do.

It almost felt as though he was walking with Lance, but of course – he wasn’t, and Lance wouldn’t feel the same way. Knowing this was starting to make Keith feel uncomfortable again. He checked the map again, finding out who was where. Lance was about to reach his end point, and Lance must have just checked his own map too because Keith heard him mutter, “oh _finally_.”

There was a short burst of panting as Lance made it a sprint finish – which was defeating the purpose of the entire exercise, which was to give the suits time to record the terrain at an even pace, but Keith guessed that Lance must have hit the point where he didn’t care about that kind of thing anymore. If he ever had?

“Yes!” cried Lance, and Keith winced at the sudden noise. The map showed a blue dot in its end position.

Keith snorted.

“Right, time to…” Lance muttered. “Keith?”

“Hi, Lance.”

“I … did you – why are you … there?”

“You called me.”

“I … what when?”

“Uh, a long time ago.”

Lance laughed. “And you’ve been listening to me this whole time? You weirdo.”

“Yeah,” smiled Keith.

“OK, well, see you later – I’ve gotta call Coran so he can pick me up and I can have a bath.”

“See you, Lance.”

* * *

Keith appreciated his sleep as much as the next person. Which meant he did not appreciate getting woken up during his sleep as much as the next person also did not appreciate that.

For some reason, that night he had been particularly restless, and Keith found himself getting woken up at every small noise or movement. He had turned his communicator off – which he didn’t usually do overnight, but he was worried that he would get absolutely no sleep if he didn’t stop thinking about it.

He made the mistake of leaving the pager function on.

He woke up to see a blue light flashing continuously against the wall.

He had finally gotten to sleep, and of course – of course, Lance, who was currently lightyears away on a far off planet for his first solo mission, still managed to wake him up.

He breathed out deeply, and rolled over to read the message.

“Call me now, it’s urgent.”

Keith flopped back against his pillow, staring at the message.

“I highly doubt that,” he growled, but he punched the right buttons anyway.

“Keith?” came a small voice. Keith was taken aback by how – unlike Lance it sounded. Lance had been gone for over a week already, and he’d been making regular updates for everyone, and he’d sounded fine.

“Are you OK, Lance?”

There was a pause from the other line.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m OK,” he sucked in a breath. “I just haven’t heard your voice for a while.” Then there was a very soft and quiet, “It’s nice.” So quiet Keith even wondered whether he was supposed to hear.

“That’s rich,” replied Keith. “Shouldn’t I be the one missing your voice? You’re the one who can’t stop running your mouth.”

Lance spluttered.

“Excuse me, I do not. You’re always talking about stupid stuff.”

“Really?” asked Keith. “Really?”

“Well,” said Lance, pausing. “I have a wealth of extremely useful and good information to say so you should be thanking me for all my talk.”

Keith huffed.

“If you say so,” he said. A smile lingered on his face.

The smile suddenly dropped as he realised all at once the gravity of what Lance said. About missing Keith’s voice.

“Lance,” he said. “Are you OK?”

“Hm,” said Lance. “I’m – it’s kind of lonely out here.”

Keith looked at the ceiling, listening to Lance who was using a voice – a quiet, sad voice – he’d never heard him use before. And Keith had heard Lance use a lot of voices.

“Hey Lance,” he said. “I miss your voice too.”

There was a silence over the line, and a small sniff.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” breathed Keith.

“It kind of sucks being on a planet by yourself,” said Lance.

“What about your lion?”

“Oh yeah – well, me and Blue, we’re best buds, of course. But we’re – the same, you know. It’s not like … it’s not like having you around.”

“I know.”

They sat in a comfortable, if slightly sad, silence for a moment.

“It kind of sucks not having you around here too. It’s kind of boring. No one to disturb me from training, no one to complain about the food.”

“No one to be ridiculously handsome and charming.”

Keith snorted.

“Yeah, exactly.”

He picked at his blanket.

“You know; you can call me – if you get lonely again. That’s fine.”

“I thought you were getting fed up of my calls,” a teasing tone replied.

“Mostly fine. It’s mostly fine. And not at 4a.m. in the morning.”

“I guess that’s reasonable.”

“So … what was so urgent? What did you need me to call about?”

“Oh! Oh yeah, how do you fix a ship that’s currently on fire right now?”

**Author's Note:**

> tada~


End file.
